unchosen
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AT] When Ken dies in Osamu's place, the elder Ichijouji has to take the burden of his brother's destiny. But how can he, when he wasn't the one that was chosen.
1. the silence at his funeral screamed like

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

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**unchosen  
1\. the silence at his funeral screamed like nails on a chalkboard**

The Sakura blossoms had dried out, leaving their stems scratched and bare. The refuse cacked like flakes of paper beneath their feet, almost inaudible in the howling winter wind – but he heard the paper as silent screams, and his steps were foolishly tentative because of it. Yet he stepped on, wandering aimlessly simply to hear the screams digging fine-point needles through his skin.

Paper could not scream; nor could dried Sakura blossoms. He knew this, and even if he wished to do so he could not delude himself to think it otherwise. Perhaps that was a fallacy of his. If he could not see or touch or taste or smell or hear, then it did not exist – or so he had believed, _thought _he had believed. Except his brother had been able to prove he hadn't, and their relationship had died for it.

Not Ken though; he'd died for Osamu:_ his_ life, shoving him away from the car as hard as a nine year old could shove; his lies, calling out his brother's falsehood even when he knew it to be the truth; his stress and frustration that had erupted into anger and fired at the comforter instead of the enemy lines… and his _God damned _pride that had held his tongue in check thereafter.

If he could have gotten away with it, he wouldn't have even come; he didn't have that right, or that strength. Not that strength had much of a place when innocence died. Most present only knew his brother's face, that cherubic face with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks and those doe blue eyes that seemed to eternally search out souls to touch with its never-ending vat of light. But they were still crying in the crowd while Osamu hid apart, thinking of how the dead Sakura blossoms wailed in near-silence under his feet and why he'd been deaf to his brother's more obvious screams.

But soon the refuse of the Sakura had been reduced into something finer than paper yet coarser than dust, and could no longer wail. And the newfound reprieve wrapped in the howls of the wind made his skin crawl; the silence itself screamed, worse than the dying wails of dried Sakura blossoms. It was fresh agony, fresh like the teeth-grinding sound of nails on a chalkboard, and when he felt unbidden tears he brushed them angrily aside and suffered the biting flakes and resultant stings from the bare Sakura tree instead.

No-one reprimanded him. No-one reached for him, except his father – a silent tall figure in the sun supporting his mother.

Osamu did not go, though the long-since tainted desire for that comfort crawled beneath the needle pricks before he could reject it.


	2. the days that followed sunk into a deep

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

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**unchosen  
2\. the days that followed sunk into a deep aching pain**

In the days that followed his little brother's funeral, Osamu learnt the meaning of a broken heart.

He had loved his brother more than anything in the world, but it had been a secret, forbidden love. Not the sort of forbidden love the world had given a grossly romantic or deeply stigmatised name. Not the love driven by physical desire and affection, like much of what the world called love in its ignorant tongue. No; to most people, it was an ordinary, unimpressive love: the love an elder brother gave the younger, from the moment they saw those sweetly innocent eyes blink up.

But for Osamu who had thrown his heart away for his studies, for that picture-perfect child the world seemed to crave, his brother had been the only one to stay close. He'd force Osamu away from hours of monotonous numbers and words to the real world, the outside world. He'd forced him to look away from the dull but understandable grey of existence to the mysterious colours beyond.

And Ken loved those colours; he'd appreciated them in a way that Osamu never had, and could never do. For Osamu, the hole he had dug for himself and been buried within was only six feet deep with crumbling, sloping walls. A slight touch caused the soil to run in a stream of grey with a fragile hiss, pre-empting the creak above. Of late, the creaks had been more audible, more ominous. Splinters had rained down…and he'd been selfish enough to leave Ken down there with him. Ken had brought some colour; spots of red that bled slowly into thin winding streams; ink trails left by the deforming red pen whose task it was to correct imperfection.

Osamu had been the one looking for perfection. Now he ached for it; that gaping hole where his heart had once been was his achievement thereof. Because Ken had been the one to always pull him back, the one to reply a frown with a smile and a blank paper with colourful crayon doodles. But no there was nothing but the black hole of his own making and a dull echo in his soul. Nothing but the grey-tinted visor through which he saw the entire world. No marring colour that could pull him into a world if blissful dreams, nor tears that could drown him in the ocean deep.

If only he could have cried…but he didn't deserve that reprieve. Only the guiltless deserved to wash away their sorrow with those tears. The empty echo of the house, its grey-washed walls, were of his own doing. He'd driven the only person he really loved away – and the force by which the elastic snapped back had killed him.

Ken, sweet innocent little Ken, had probably thought it was all his fault.


	3. the keyboards opened the doors to other,

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

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**unchosen  
3\. the keyboards opened the doors to other, less fabric worlds**

Time stretched on without an end in sight. Osamu continued on in his studies. His parents continued to give him lukewarm smiles of encouragement…but now they were missing something. That something that all of them had taken for granted, simply assumed would always be there, in the backdrop.

But it wasn't. _Ken _wasn't. And now the thing that had cut up tome had gone as well. It became a long string without knots or brakes, and the frays simply bit at his fingers and let them go.

He imagined thin lines being carved into those fingers, fingers that had been dulled from the constant tapping on computer keys and handling of thin biro point pens. He imagined them bleeding onto those pristine white keys his mother always made to polish clean, imagined the splashing stains of colour it would leave behind.

But perfection had no room for that, and all he could do was cast those loose thoughts aside and drive on like a mindless drone. There was no-one to make him do otherwise; no Ken to show his charming smile and complain it wasn't healthy to stare at a computer screen or a textbook all day, or complain that Osamu hadn't played with him and fulfilled his brotherly duties for the day.

He'd felt out of his element, playing with his little brother, and teaching him little things like how to read. Patience was a virtue he lacked, and playing and teaching both demanded it. He, Osamu, left more scrapes than Ken deserved, but Ken was always smiling as he asked for more…except for that one time, that _last_ time…

He'd drifted off without realising it. He'd displaced the ENTER key on his keyboard, like Ken always used to when he got too enthusiastic over a computer game. Osamu had played them all once and that was it; the rest of the time it was Ken, trying to beat his brother's records.

But not all of them. Somehow, Osamu had opened one Ken had never, to his knowledge, touched. A game that crossed strategy and fighting, that gave pieces to play with and removed them. "Killed" was the term they used for the pieces lost…and Ken, naïve but sweet little innocent Ken, had stayed far away from it.

Except there were three scores recorded. Two were his, and one saved under his name: the high score that sat at the very top of the ladder. The other, the number two place, was what he'd just earned. The other was under the defaulted name: not his, nor Ken's. But no-one else used that computer but them.

It was dated a couple of weeks back: those few days the two brothers had barely spoken to each other, when Ken burned with a rare anger and Osamu had just left things be. And now it was too late; Osamu sat at his computer and imagined his little brother angrily pounding keys, watching the characters on the screen fight until one fell and another moved on, taking his frustrations out where only the inanimate avatars in the game would suffer for it. It was, in a way, shocking. Frightening. Ken wasn't supposed to be like that. Ken wasn't supposed to get angry.

_Of course he is. He's human._

It was Osamu that wasn't.


	4. amidst the now doors were things he did

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

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**unchosen  
4\. amidst the now doors were things he did not realise before**

The computer, it seemed, had opened up new doors. He'd never spent as much time on it in the past as he did now, poking at every inch of it, every scrap of memory it retained, and looked for all the things he'd never realised before.

He had records of everything. Records he'd never thought he'd use. But he was using them now, using them to uncover the side of his little brother he'd never seen, never had the chance to see.

No, he reflected, that wasn't true. Hadn't he seen that hurt and angry Ken? When he'd caught him with that strange device in hand? And he'd just ignored it, thinking Ken was just pretending, just wanting attention. Think Ken couldn't possibly know how to be angry, _truly_ angry.

But the evidence that Ken had and could be was right in front of his face. The games that Ken had always hated played when Osamu hadn't been there to play them – and Ken must have been copying him, because Osamu only had those games in the first place to play when he was in a bad mood. His parents hadn't been agreeable at first, thinking as most adults did that they were garbage for the brain. But Osamu had needed them, had needed something he could do without his brain, without having to think about marks or competitions or all that.

An innocent first wish of studying hard and pleasing his parents had turned into an obsession, something he just couldn't lose. Even now he couldn't stop working, stop studying; it was his way of coping, of forgetting. And when he couldn't take it anymore, when his head was filled to capacity and was about to explode, he'd exit all his academia related programmes and bring up a brain numbing fighting game instead.

Except they weren't brain numbing any more. They were pulling his thoughts to other things: those things he approached those games to protect. Footprints of his sweet little brother who'd never even liked those games plastered everywhere. Footsteps Osamu was only starting to see, and appreciate.

They were also footsteps he didn't _want_ to appreciate, because they were all telling him he hadn't known his brother at all.

He hit the shut down button on his computer, not caring what was open, what unsaved files he'd lose. He didn't want to stare at the screen anymore – but aside from that and his academics, he had nothing else. His eyes raked the room. Textbooks. Notebooks. Computer softwares. A few games. In his drawers, clothes and spare stationaries –

And in the top one, that little device that had been the source of their last quarrel.


	5. within the grey plastic cover lay secret

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

This was originally two separate chapters (I accidentally wrote two chapter 5s, lol), but a little chopping and changing reorganised it into a chapter 5 and a chapter 6. :D So all good again.

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**unchosen  
5\. within the grey plastic cover lay secrets that silence still kept**

He took the digivice out from the drawer and stared at the little plastic gadget in his hands. It didn't look remarkable in the least…but something about it had stirred Ken up. Something about it had called out to him.

Osamu raised it to ear level and shook it again. Like the last time, it made no noise at all. Silent, like his room, framing only the echoes of raised voices and a slap resounding through lost time. It told him nothing he didn't already know. Just that he'd been blind and a fool, taking Ken for granted one too many times.

And now that would be his haunt. This little device, this inconsequential thing looking at him with its mocking stare, telling nothing of its secrets. Or maybe it had no secret at all, and Osamu was simply searching for one, looking for meaning inside something where no meaning existed.

Maybe he was just trying to, so to speak, place the blame somewhere, make a little lighter the heavy load that existed on himself because of it.

But it was telling him nothing, and time would not freeze for him. Eventually he had to do something else: the mountain of schoolwork that awaited him or a video game because Ken was no longer there with him to play with and he'd never taken the time to learn anything else.

Still, he obsessed over the digivice, once obsessing over his studies failed him without Ken there to strike the perfect balance, as he'd always had. Time was sluggish and slow without him. Screeching to halts too many times. Scratching and biting at skin he hadn't even realised was so tender. Letting him bleed little dry flecks of blood all over the carpeted floor.

The computer. The digivice. The bits of Ken he hadn't known. Had ignored. Those bits dragged him in. He had to know about them – _all_ about them.

But the digivice was just a plastic toy in his hands, telling him nothing.

Funny how he didn't believe that now. He'd believed it easily enough when it had been Ken saying there was something deeper. Something almost magical. Now that Ken and Ken's voice were gone, Osamu had no proof at all – and yet, he was searching for it, as if Ken was _right_ and only now that Ken's voice was fading into far away memories could Osamu accept it as the truth.

Or maybe it was guilt making him _want_ it to be true.

But it was to no avail, whatever the reason was. The digivice did nothing for him. Opened no doors. He tried though. He took a picture and posted it online in the hopes that someone else would recognise it. He took it to professors and other genius students, hoping they'd have an idea. He stared and stared and stared, as if something would click in his mind. But there was nothing. Nothing.

Until, one day, there was something. Two somethings.


	6. in the still tender grey, the whispers f

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

**unchosen  
6\. in the still tender grey, the whispers from an ocean arose**

He switched on his computer. It seemed his entire world now, save the bare necessities of his human frame, demanded it. It hummed lightly, a loud sound in the silence, as it booted. It didn't demand a password. With only the two of them ever using it and it almost always on anyway, it hadn't needed one. Oosamu had had other ways of protecting things he couldn't afford to lose, and Ken had always been careful with his things.

Like they were made from some priceless glass that would become useless when shattered.

The desktop came up, along with two blinking envelopes. Someone had sent him mail. And not one. But two.

Both were emails to his personal account. Surprising, because his personal account was supposed to be just that: personal. He had another for everyday things, and that's the one he'd given to everybody. Only his family had the personal account. And friends. Ken's friends, since Osamu didn't have anyone he could call a friend. But surely Ken's friends knew they would only be getting Osamu on that address now.

_It might be hate mail,_ he thought with some amusement. _Or it might be Ken. Or both._

He didn't believe that. Not really. Ken might have, if he'd been the one to survive and Osamu had just been run over like he should have, and like any other idiot freezing in the path of an incoming car would have.

But he hadn't been run over. He'd survived and Ken who'd shoved him with more strength than Osamu had known he'd possessed had ended up dead instead.

He opened the first one, recognising the name. A work associate of his father's. Maybe that was who'd given him it.

But the email was nothing like a father's work associate would be writing to a boy.

His hand was shaking as he got out of it. _Digital World… Death… Escape… Ken… Destiny…_

His eyes stuck on two particular lines. 'For you, it would have been escape…' and '…with his unfortunate death, now it falls to you to carry out your brother's destiny and continue your own unfortunate existence…'

_Unfortunate… Unfortunate existence…_

The car was supposed to hit him that day. He was supposed to die and, in doing so, set both himself and his brother free.

He laughed dryly, gripping the edge of his desk. _I was supposed to die. I should have died._

Well, he'd always known that.


	7. in a big bright world, there is a dark p

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

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**unchosen  
7\. in a big bright world, there is a dark pocket with an answer there**

He opened the other email. It was more direct: simply instructions to take the image down because it was dangerous and a phone number to call.

Osamu wasn't feeling particularly social, but he called the number anyhow.

The one who'd sent the email picked up: one Izumi Koushiro.

The conversation was both revealing and unrevealing at the same time. He told about the Digital World once Osamu revealed he knew a bit – what his brother had told him. But he didn't know the way in. And he didn't have any other proof, apart from the words of eight children.

And they didn't know a thing about Ken except what had been on the news.

In the end, he slammed the phone down in frustration. Nothing. That had given him nothing. They weren't friends of Ken. They didn't even _know_ Ken – or that important place he'd found that was worth fighting his brother when he'd never fought his brother for anything before.

They didn't know what happened to a digivice without an owner either.

He went back to the first email because, in the end, that was the more telling one. The one that didn't just give him dry hard facts he'd have soaked up before because Ken was always there to add some colour…

And he soaked up the pretty lines of that email. Almost poetic, now that he read them more closely. Poetic, philosophical…with truths buried beneath that he only had to read…

The oddity of its author, its words, escaped him for a moment. He hadn't realised it the first time, but more than just plain despair, there was a _possibility_ written in those words.

There was also a duty.

"Because your brother has passed, you must bear the fate of both worlds in his place. You must live on…for him, and for yourself."

He whispered the last words out load. 'You must fulfil your brother's destiny. Unlock the gate inside despair.' He repeated it. That possibility. Those binding words. 'The gate inside despair.'

There was a gate that he could open. A gate that hadn't banged shut and sealed with sealant like all the others that had closed with his brother's death. A gate that had _opened_ because of it.

Tears began to stream down his cheeks but he was smiling. Here was a possibility. The first glimpse of light he'd seen since he'd lost it: that bright light that was his younger brother in his life.

Following that glimpse, he could find the Ken he hadn't taken the chance to know. The Ken in the Digital World.


	8. there is a possibility and within it a s

**A/N:** Written for the Becoming the Tamer King Challenge: Training Peak Task, and for the What if Challenge, "What if Ken died instead of Osamu?" Both challenges are on the Digimon Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link's in my profile).

And that's the end of this little fic. I originally planned it to be longer, but in the process this has become the stepping stone to a more detailed multichip. It'll be a while yet because I can only handle one rewrite of the same season at a time (especially when the other one also involves Osamu instead of Ken). The first main fic will be called The Virus in the Digital World…when it starts being written. :D

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**unchosen  
8\. there is a possibility and within it a sacrifice to be made**

There had been no contact details, but maybe Oikawa Yukio had known Osamu could easily get those from his father, and he did. He sought out the man who had offered a possibility. He sought that possibility itself.

Sadly, he was to find that the possibility was very slim. But it was there. There was a connection – something those children who had digivices just like Ken's but knew nothing had never known – and with that connection, a road could be built.

And he learned that Oikawa Yukio was another man who wanted to build that road.

They were the same, Oikawa and Osamu. The survivors when they were the worthless ones, the ones who should have died. The mourners, mourning for those who should have continued living on. For Oikawa, it was his best friend. For Osamu, it was his little brother. For both of them, it was the light of their lives they'd lost.

And in each other, there was a sparkle of hope left to be found.

Oikawa had the knowledge, because he'd listened where Osamu had blocked his ears. But he didn't have the skills. Osamu had those: years of honing them – for nothing, he'd thought.

But it wasn't for nothing any more.

He had something to work towards now. Something to hope towards. A gate that he had to open. A world that he had to reach. A puzzle that he had to finish. His brother's puzzle. His brother's life. His brother's destiny.

That digivice was the key, but it was Ken's digivice and it didn't do a thing. Not for Osamu. Not for Oikawa. Not for their despair.

But the secret still lay within it, and Osamu searched and searched.

He forgot about the other children. He forgot about that persona of himself he'd built. That everyone except for Ken had been subjected to. He'd never driven towards anything like he was driving towards this.

And, with the progress Oikawa had made, with where he'd screeched to a halt, there was hope. There was a platform he could work off. Improve. Oikawa had a spider and a mummy as avatars on the other side. It didn't take Osamu long to create his own avatar – a barely cracked egg that he could send through the gate.

That was the extent of Oikawa's progress, but Osamu was there now. He worked on progressing it. Worked in the darkness, with that little bit of light to push him on. Not guide him, because it wasn't bright enough to guide him. But still, push him on.

He pushed and pushed and pushed until one day his brother's digivice turned black and pear-shaped and a gate to somewhere opened.


End file.
